Lorraine had written it herself.
To Travis’s Girl.
For a moment, the usual Christmas noise seemed to collapse around those three words.
A fork stopped halfway to someone’s plate.
One cousin dropped his eyes toward the carpet as if suddenly fascinated by it.
The little dog beneath the table backed away from the chair legs.
Beside me, Travis squeezed his paper coffee cup so hard the side caved inward.
Lorraine kept smiling.
That smile told me she knew exactly what she had done, because it was the same expression she used whenever she wanted everyone else to participate in pretending that an insult was too small for decent people to mention.
If we objected, we would be ruining Christmas.
If we stayed quiet, she got what she wanted.
I leaned toward my husband and whispered his name.
“Travis.”
He did not look at his mother.
He looked at Zia.
“I told her to give Mom the red box if this happened again,” he said quietly.
I turned toward him.
“What red box?”
“The one in her overnight bag.”
I stared at him because this was the first I had heard about it.
“You planned this?”
His answer came immediately.
